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Why Job Boards Trump Social Media – 3/12/2013

Social media is a hot topic in hiring and recruiting circles. It seems like everyone is talking about new developments—especially the late 2012 launch of Facebook’s Social Jobs Partnership. According to some sources, 89 percent of companies intend to use social media networks for recruiting this year. If you’re a healthcare employer or recruiter, you may have considered doing so as well, perhaps even abandoning previous methods—like the job board.

Don’t do it. Job boards continue to be among the smartest tools medical practices, urgent care clinics, hospitals and other healthcare facilities can use to source and connect with qualified candidates—and niche job boards, like healthecareers.com, are even better. In fact, job boards often trump social media for the following reasons.

Social Media Requires Time

When your medical practice or hospital department is missing an admin, a physician assistant, a lab tech or a registered nurse, service quality suffers. You may even have to force patients to deal with longer wait times—and they never like that. If you try to use social media to fill that vacancy, they could be waiting for a while.

Social media recruiting requires a significant investment of time. To capture the attention of potential healthcare employees, you must devote hours to searching out relevant content, reposting it, and tweeting about it. It’s not a one-time thing, either. You must do it consistently if you want to keep their attention.

It can be tough to do so, because most social media users aren’t there to look for jobs. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 66 percent of social media users want to stay in touch with friends and family. Fifty percent are online to connect with old friends. This doesn’t leave them much time for job searching.

Job Boards are Efficient

On the other hand, you can fill your open healthcare positions fast if you use a job board—especially a niche offering like healthecareers.com. Just write a description, post it to the job board, and connect with thousands of active candidates. If you’d rather approach individual candidates on your own, you can search the job board’s database of healthcare professional resumes.

It’s that easy for job seekers, too. This may explain why most prefer job boards. According to a 2012 survey of more than 5,000 adults, conducted by Millennial Branding, most job seekers rely on job boards despite the popularity of social networking for other purposes. The survey results revealed that 87 percent of professionals between the ages of 48 and 67 use job boards, followed by 82 percent between the ages of 30 and 47. Even the Millennial generation uses job boards—77 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29, in fact.

Job Boards Produce Better Results

When you post a front office or charge nurse job online, your ultimate goal is to drive applicants to your practice’s website or a job board where they can submit their resume or complete an online application. Unfortunately, this requires the potential healthcare employee to take a number of steps. Complicate the process and fewer professionals will apply.

For example, job boards have an average 6 percent conversion rate from social media posts. This means you’ve lost as much as 94 percent of your prospects after the dozens of hours you invested in reaching them. That’s not the case with job boards, which allow professionals to apply or submit resumes immediately.

Social media is probably here to stay, and as such, should have a place in your recruiting arsenal. However, it should not become the primary tool you use to reach healthcare professionals. Job boards like healthecareers.com are efficient, easy to use, preferred by job seekers, and offer unbeatable results.